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ROME, June 9: A United Nations Food Summit opens in Rome on Monday aiming to prick the world’s conscience and raise billions of dollars to fight global hunger that kills an estimated one person every four seconds.
The gathering follows a 1996 event that vowed to cut the number of hungry people to 400 million by 2015 from 840 million. Since then the number has only dropped to 815 million, with war, natural disasters and political indifference taking its toll.
“In this era of global abundance, why does the world continue to tolerate the daily hunger and deprivation of more than 800 million people?” said Jacques Diouf, director general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
However, the lofty goals of this latest in a series of UN meetings risk being overshadowed by the unexpected appearance of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who has managed to sidestep a European Union travel ban to attend the conference.
FAO, which is staging the summit in its labyrinthian Rome headquarters, says dozens of world leaders are flying in for the four-day event, but with most richer nations sending only junior delegations, Mugabe is likely to steal the limelight.
Western governments say Mugabe is partially responsible for food shortages affecting millions of people in Zimbabwe following the invasion of productive, white-owned farms over the past two years by militants loyal to the president.
Mugabe, who was slapped with an EU travel ban ahead of his disputed election victory earlier this year, blames drought for the crisis, and arrived in Rome on Saturday to demand more aid.
“Of course we don’t want him here, but we had no choice. International law says he has the right to attend UN summits,” said one Italian official who declined to be named.
MORE MONEY PLEASE: The FAO summit is expected to demand an additional $24 billion a year in agriculture and rural investment, to reverse a recent slide in farm aid and help cut the number of hungry by 20 million each year to meet the 2015 target.
At present, overseas development assistance totals some $68 billion of which only $11 billion is earmarked for agriculture, against some $15 billion spent on farming in 1988.
Pope John Paul wished the summit success during his regular Sunday address to pilgrims and tourists at the Vatican.
“Millions of people who suffer daily from hunger and malnutrition expect this meeting to confirm the commitments made in 1996,” said the Pope, who opened the last food summit.
The FAO currently has food emergency appeals underway for much of southern Africa, where it says at least 10 million people face starvation, as well as Afghanistan and North Korea.
The 1996 goals were widely denounced at the time as too modest, with Cuban President Fidel Castro telling the conference it was “shameful”. If anything, they have proved over-ambitious and there is no guarantee that this week’s meeting will do anything to improve matters.
The failure last week of ministers to agree to a draft action plan for a major UN Earth Summit in South Africa in August have only added to skepticism over such meetings where actions rarely seem to live up to the fine ideals.
Thousands of protesters, including Indonesian, Mexican and African farmers, marched peacefully through Rome on Saturday ahead of the food summit to demand that world leaders change their tactics in the war on hunger.
“It is not a problem of quantity of food, it’s an economic and political problem,” said rebel French farmer Jose Bove.
Italy has thrown up a tight security cordon around the FAO headquarters for what the organisers say will be the largest gathering of heads of state since the September 11 attacks on the United States.
The summit was originally due to be held last November but was called off because of fears of terror strikes.
Besides Mugabe, Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri, South African President Thabo Mbeki, Nigerian President Olusegun Obesanjo and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan are all expected in Rome for the meeting.—Reuters
